The Betrayal of Maggie Blair

Chapter 32

My journey with the drovers from Bute to Dumbarton had been quiet and slow, dictated by the leisurely pace of the cattle. On the flight from Kilmacolm to Edinburgh, Tam and I had been fugitives, fearfully dodging Black Cuffs and stealing to survive.

My progress from Edinburgh back toward Kilmacolm with Uncle Blair was quite different. We walked in the open along the public highway, a respectable pair of travelers, Uncle Blair raising his hat courteously to passersby. We paid for our food and lodging with the pennies that Cousin Thomas had pressed upon us.

Uncle Blair was stronger in body now, but his mind was troubled. Often we walked in silence, but from time to time his thoughts would boil over in impassioned speech.

"I've always been a peaceful man!" he would cry out. "I've only wanted to do what's right, and look after my family, and work in my fields, and worship my Savior in the true Presbyterian way! Why? Why has all this persecution happened to us? Why have such wicked men been unleashed against us?"

And he would go over, again and again, the cruelties and slaughter he had witnessed.

They're not all wicked, I thought. Not Musketeer Sharpus, anyway. You can't condemn them all. Tam didn't. He was sorry about the ones who died on the other side too.

Uncle Blair spoke of Tam only once, after the sound of a bagpipe had wafted to us on a distant breeze.

"I couldn't get the measure of the man at all," he said. "A rascally kind of a fellow, I suppose."

"He was good," I said lamely. "You didn't know the half of it. He helped people. Even thieves and poor people that no one else noticed."

Like Jesus, I nearly added.

Uncle Blair was following his own train of thought.

"He wasn't a man of the Covenant, now, was he?"

"No, Uncle. I never heard him talk about that."

"And on the subject of man's free will, were his views sound?"

"He didn't know what it meant."

Uncle Blair walked on in silence.

"I sometimes think," he said at last, with a kind of wondering in his voice, "that we judge wrongdoers too harshly and forget the message of love in the Gospel."

I admired my uncle for the strength of his convictions, but it was when he softened into a kind of doubt that I really loved him.

While he'd been talking about Tam, the inner struggle that had been going on inside me ever since we had walked out through the gates of Edinburgh had been resolved. I knew what I was going to do. I put my hand into my pocket and fingered the little leather purse in which lay the precious coins that Mr. Shillinglaw had given me. They rattled against my father's silver buckle. Their jingle seemed to say, You're free. Free to go.

If it hadn't been such a fine day, with the August sun warming the stones and the rowan berries turning scarlet on the trees, I think my resolve would have weakened. But as we approached the turning that would lead to Kilmacolm and Ladymuir, I steeled myself to walk past it and go on to the west, until I reached the sea and the boat that would take me home.

Uncle Blair was about to turn down the familiar path and was speeding up with joyful anticipation of his homecoming, before I plucked up the courage to tell him my decision. He stared at me, appalled.

"Go back to Bute? After all that's happened? And travel alone? A young woman? You can't! I won't allow it!"

"I'm sorry, Uncle," was all I could say. "I can't go home with you."

"Maggie, dear girl." He put his hands on my arms and looked earnestly into my face. "I know that your aunt hasn't always—that she doesn't find it easy to—but in her heart she values you, I know she does, and she wants you to be with us."

I reached up and kissed his cheek, from which the beard, scraped off by Cousin Thomas, was already bristling out again.

"It's not my aunt," I said. "She's always done her best with me. But I want to go home! I told you what the lawyer man said. There's no danger for me now. I have to face my accusers. I can't go on running forever. And I must thank Mr. Robertson for trying to help me, and I've got to see if my old cow is all right, and—and—oh, so many things."

"You mean," he said, his brow wrinkling, "that you feel duty bound to return? That it's the Lord who's showing you this path and not some girlish willfulness?"

There was such simple goodness and honesty in my uncle that it was impossible to lie to him. A glib answer rose to my lips and died there.

"I'm not sure if that's it, exactly," I said at last. "It's what my heart is telling me to do. Is that my conscience speaking? And if so, is it the voice of the Lord?"

He nodded slowly.

"With you, Maggie, I believe it is. Your heart is pure. Your courage is proven. But I don't like it. I'm afraid for you. And they will all be disappointed at home."

They won't think of me at all, I thought. Not once they've seen you. Except for Ritchie, perhaps, and Martha.

Aloud I said, "You don't need to worry about me, Uncle. It's only a few miles from here to Largs. I'll be there by tonight. And boats go across every day to Rothesay."

"Well," he said reluctantly. "You've a strong mind, my dear, and you've achieved harder things than this. I suppose I must let you go. But you'll come again soon to Ladymuir? We'll not be happy till we've seen you there again."

"I will. I promise."

He had given in.

"I shall remember you daily in my prayers," he said, and kissed me fondly on my cheek.

I almost wavered when I saw the love and concern in his eyes, but I steeled myself for a last goodbye, and once he had set out down the track, he didn't look back. I knew that every bit of him was yearning for his home and family.

For a moment, I was horribly lonely but straight afterward came a wave of joy. I jumped and twirled about and began to almost run on toward the sea.

Fortune smiled on me that day, because as I marched along the road, swinging my arms, a farmer and his wife offered to take me up in their cart. I sat on the back of it, dangling my legs all the way to Largs, where the masts of ships bound for the islands were bobbing about on the quayside, casting long shadows across the water in the evening light.

The farmer let me sleep in his barn that night, and his wife called me into her kitchen for a bowl of steaming porridge in the morning.

"There's a boat going over to Bute in an hour or two," she told me. "My man's asked the skipper for you. He'll give you a passage for a couple of pennies."

I thanked her, surprised by her kindness and interest in me.

"What did you say your name was?" she asked, watching me as I ate my breakfast.

"Maggie. Maggie Blair."

"I knew it." She clapped her hands down onto her apron in triumph. "I said to Nicholas last night, she'll be that girl, I said, the one who was taken up for a—you know what I mean—over in Rothesay, and who got out of the tolbooth." She paused, her eyes on me, bright with curiosity, and when I didn't say anything, she nodded, satisfied. "There were all kinds of stories at first, about the Devil flying away with you over the chimneys. Of course, I didn't believe them. Superstitious nonsense! But then it got out about the jailer drinking himself stupid and how your granny shooed you out on your own. How did you do it? How did you get off the island without being seen? Everyone wonders. You must have been so scared!"

She had been so kind and seemed so excited to meet me that I felt obliged to tell her my story, though I didn't want to. The memory of that awful time still made me shake inside. Luckily, before I'd had to say too much, the farmer put his head around the door.

"If you want to get to Rothesay today, you'd better run down to the shore now, miss. The sails are up. They're about to cast off."

***

Although it was still August, there was a fresh wind blowing, filling the boat's sails and making me shiver and pull my shawl close around my head. Slowly, very slowly, the Isle of Bute, lying long and low on the horizon, grew up out of the sea. As the hours passed, I could make out first the shapes of the bays, and then the outline of trees, and then the long strips of field at harvest, lying in brown and yellow lines across the hillsides, and then farmhouses with their ragged thatched roofs. At last I could make out people, walking about on the foreshore.

It looks so small, I thought. Even the castle. It's nothing compared to Edinburgh. I'd always thought Rothesay was a grand big place.

Though my heart thudded with fear, I felt an unexpected longing as the boat's prow creamed through the final stretch of water to tie up at the jetty. I'd never known until this moment how much I'd missed my island.

I'd had no clear idea of what I'd do once I arrived, though I'd planned first to walk down to Kingarth to seek out Mr. Robertson and thank him for the help he'd given to Granny and me. But I hadn't bargained for the stir my arrival would cause.

I'd hardly taken my first steps ashore when a woman carrying a basket of oysters on her head cried out, "Look who it is! The Blair girl! Maggie Blair!"

Heads swiveled around. The miller, loading sacks out of the boat onto his horse, almost let one drop as he turned to stare. A couple of fishermen, who were working on the upturned hull of their boat, dropped their tools and came over for a better look. A moment later a crowd had gathered.

I felt a surge of terror. Had Mr. Shillinglaw told me the truth? Or was I walking straight back into the old nightmare?

Then someone called out, "So you've come back, then, Maggie. Good for you!"

He spoke with self-conscious bravery, as if he was afraid he might be going against the general opinion.

"Aye, welcome home, girl," said another, more confidently.

"Look at her! She's grown! Hasn't she grown?" marveled a woman.

"Aye, you always were a bonny lass," another said, her voice almost sickly with affection.

Inside me, something that had been pulled as taut as a fiddle string relaxed so suddenly that I was afraid I would slump down and be overwhelmed with tears. Only Granny's voice, loud inside my head, stopped me.

"Hold your head up, child. Where's your pride? Don't let the loons see you down."

"Well," I said, swallowing hard. "I see they've not mended the castle walls yet. And the tolbooth looks about the same, too."

There were a few uneasy laughs, and someone said, "Look, here comes Mr. Robertson," and there was a murmur of relief as they stepped back to let him past.

Mr. Robertson raised his hat to the crowd and was about to hurry by when he saw me. He stopped and his face broke open into a smile so frankly joyful that I had to smile back at him.

"Here's someone I'd never hoped to see again! Maggie, it is you! Oh, this is wonderful. You've come back, I hope, in a spirit of forgiveness. We know, all of us, what a great wrong was done to you." His gaze swept around the ring of faces. Eyes dropped and feet shuffled. "I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we want to make amends."

At that moment a couple of boys who had been chasing each other down the hill burst into the crowd. They saw me, and the first began to chant, "Witch girl, witch hag, hang and burn her, till she's..."

Before he could finish, a giant of a farmer turned and swiped at him, catching such a clout on the side of his head that the boy went sprawling in the mud.

"Hold your tongue, you wee scunner," he snarled.

It's still there. Under the surface. It always will be, I thought, a chill in my heart.

But Mr. Robertson was talking to me again.

"You'll come home with me to Kingarth, I hope? You'll take your dinner with us, perhaps. Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"I—I'm not sure. I hadn't thought."

"Mrs. Robertson will be delighted to meet you. My wife, you know. I was married last December."

He looked self-conscious and actually blushed. I noticed then that he was no longer the thin, gangling young man of last year. He had filled out, and the buttons of his long black waistcoat were actually straining across his stomach.

"Thank you, Mr. Robertson," I said gratefully, wishing to get away from the ring of onlookers as much as anything else. "I'd be grateful."

***

It was a relief to leave Rothesay behind, and Mr. Robertson kept blessedly silent until we had left behind us the grim tolbooth and climbed the hill toward St. Mary's Church. But as we passed the door, I was hit by such a strong memory of the day when Granny and I had stood there in sackcloth, as the good people of Bute, filled with hate, spat at us, that I began to tremble and feel sick.

"It's over, Maggie. It's all over now," Mr. Robertson said kindly, seeing how white I had turned.

I couldn't help it. I started crying then. He stopped and made me sit down under a tree in the churchyard, passed me his kerchief to wipe my nose, and waited, quiet and patient, until I had managed to pull myself together with a last hiccup.

It was five miles or so to Kingarth, nearly two hours of walking, but even that wasn't time enough for all the questions he asked me and his expressions of astonishment at my answers.

"So you've been aiding the martyrs of Dunnottar," he kept saying admiringly. "That was a terrible thing, so I've heard."

There were questions I wanted to ask him, but we reached his manse at Kingarth before I had the chance.

I hung back at his solid front door, afraid that Mrs. Robertson might not be as pleased to see me as her husband had promised. But I needn't have worried. Mrs. Robertson was as clean and pink as her husband, but small and round, with bobbing curls and a tendency to laugh at the smallest thing. She seemed a strange kind of wife for the earnest young minister, but I could see that she had done him good, softening his austerity and giving him a greater ease.

Although I felt shy in her neat kitchen, I smiled inwardly at how much more nervous I would have been over a year ago. I saw myself as I had been then: a wild, dirty child, with ragged clothes and unkempt hair, ignorant, illiterate, and fearful. I caught a puzzled look on her face as she appraised the good woolen cloth of the gown that Cousin Thomas had given me and watched me fold my shawl neatly and lay it aside, as Aunt Blair had always done, before I sat at the table and folded my hands, waiting for Mr. Robertson to say grace.

Is this really the girl you told me about? she seemed to be asking her husband.

I couldn't help showing off a little as the meal progressed. I told Mrs. Robertson how Mr. Haddo dressed cocks' combs in the Marischal of Dunnottar's kitchens. I explained to her Aunt Blair's method of salting beef and began to describe the fashionable dresses of the high-up ladies of Edinburgh, though I stopped before I had told her of the craze for ribbon knots when I noticed that Mr. Robertson was frowning with displeasure at this show of frivolity.

"So, Maggie," he said at last. "You'll do us the favor, I hope, of reading to us tonight's passage from the Good Book before we go to our beds."

He took a large Bible down from the shelf in the alcove by the fire, opened it, and laid it front of me. It was gently done, but I could tell that he was setting me a test, and my pulse quickened. I hadn't read a word since leaving Kilmacolm all those months ago.

It was fortunate that the story he chose was the Good Samaritan, a favorite one that I had read many times before.

" A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves,'" I began.

I read on faultlessly, and when I had finished the chapter, I looked up to check if he wanted me to carry on. As I did so, I surprised the Robertsons exchanging a look. He was mouthing a question to her. She was nodding with enthusiastic consent.

"That was well done," he said, taking the Bible and replacing it on the shelf.

He sat down again at the table and cleared his throat.

"I have an idea for you, Maggie," he began, nodding solemnly. "It's a kind of—a proposition."

"Oh, do tell her, John!" interrupted Mrs. Robertson, her shoulders heaving with her customary laughter.

"We're trying to set up a school here," Mr. Robertson said, suppressing her with a look. "The teacher has been found, but he can't start until after this coming winter. I believe you could stand in for him and teach the little ones their letters. There's a cottage for the teacher, you know, and a kail yard. You would earn some pennies, enough to live on in a simple sort of way."

His words seemed to buzz in my ears. The idea was too absurd. Impossible.

"I couldn't do that," I said. "I wouldn't know how to do that."

"Say yes, dear! You'd be perfect!" said Mrs. Robertson, clapping her chubby hands.

What do you know about it? I thought, with a little spurt of irritation. The last child I saw in Bute was calling out to me, "Witch girl, witch hag!"

"I don't know." I shook my head.

"You must have time to think it over," said Mr. Robertson. "Let us sleep on the matter prayerfully, and in the morning, God willing, wiser councils will prevail."

"Amen." His wife giggled.

***

I fell into a deep sleep as soon as I had lain down on the small truckle bed they set out for me by the kitchen fire, but I woke very early in the morning. It was still dark, but the faintest glimmer of early dawn was creeping through the cracks in the wooden window shutter.

I had been dreaming uncomfortably of a kind of prison, a vault with a small window, from which a cliff fell away to the sea raging on rocks below. The vault was full of children tugging at me, pulling at me, calling me names as I shouted out the letters of the alphabet.

The Robertsons' strange proposition came back to me with full force.

Me! A teacher! Right here, in Kingarth! How Granny would have laughed. How bitter her laughter would have been and how triumphant.

You show them, girl, I seemed to hear her say. You're better than the lot of them.

But the dream of prison was still upon me, and the air in the little kitchen was close and stuffy. I got up and crept to the door, lifted the latch, and stepped outside.

There is no air like the soft air of Bute, crisp with the tang of the sea, laden with the richness of the earth and the fullness of grass and trees. I breathed it in, long and deep, remembering the stench of Edinburgh, the foulness of Dunnottar, and the lighter air of the moors and mosses of Kilmacolm.

Almost of my own accord, my feet began to move, and I was walking and then I was running up the hill from Kingarth and down the long, long lane to Scalpsie Bay.

The sun had risen by the time I had rounded the last bend. I stopped, the familiarity of the place clutching at me. Every twig on every tree was known to me. Every stone in every ditch. Every pebble on the sweep of the beach.

The tide was out. The bones of the whale still lay on the sand, clean and whitened to a stark frame. Beyond the water rose the mass of Arran, touched with pink in the morning light.

And there was the cottage. Our cottage.

Smoke was rising through the thatch. I watched it for a moment, without understanding, then a howl of rage tore out of me, and I raced down the last stretch of lane.

I reached the gap in the hedge. Robbie Macbean was squatting in the dirt by the kail yard, his breeks around his ankles.

"Get out! What are you doing here? Get out of my house!" I shrieked at him.

He looked up at me, his mouth open, terror in his eyes. He tried to stand but tripped on his breeks and fell on his face in the mud, letting out a wail of anguish.

Someone appeared at the cottage door. It was Jeanie Macbean.

She saw me and flinched, putting out both hands as if to protect herself.

"You've come at last," she said. "I knew you would."

I'd been so hot with rage a moment earlier that I might have rushed at her and attacked her with my fists, but the distress of little Robbie distracted me. I couldn't help myself. I went over to him, picked him up, and set him on his feet.

"Stop that noise, you silly wee man. I'm not going to hurt you."

He ran to his mother, clutching at his breeks, and clung to her skirts, staring at me wide-eyed.

The sight of Mrs. Macbean standing in my own doorway, where I'd seen Granny stand so many, many times, made my fury rise again, but it was cold rage now.

"You took it, then, our cottage, like you always wanted," I said bitterly. "I hope Mr. Macbean's pleased with himself. I hope he's happy now."

To my surprise, Mrs. Macbean let out a shriek of laughter that was wild to the point of madness.

"Happy? In Hell? Happy?"

Before I could say anything, the laughter left her, and she seemed to shrink within herself. She put a weary hand up to her head.

"You'll be wanting to put us out. I won't make a fuss. Give me a day, Maggie, that's all I ask, to find another place."

"What do you mean, another place?" I couldn't understand. "Go home, to your nice big farm, up there on the hill."

She stared at me.

"You don't know, then? You have not heard?"

"Heard what?"

She turned away, as if she was ashamed.

"Come inside for a minute. I'll tell you. You'll be happy enough to hear it, I don't doubt."

I went into my old home with odd reluctance.

The vile toad, Granny had said. The cold snail.

And there was something vile and cold in that familiar room, where the floor was unswept, and Jeanie Macbean's little girls looked at me from thin, pinched faces, their eyes wide with fear. There was a chill of misery, a despair that not even Granny had spread around her.

"He hanged himself," Mrs. Macbean said baldly. "From the old ash tree out by our barn."

"What?"

I had to put a hand down on the old table to steady myself.

"After you—after the trial and all that, it came out. About him and Annie, and the child, and the lies he'd told. The lies! They stripped him of being an Elder, of course. He was up before the Kirk Session. He had to sit for four Sundays on the stool of repentance, in the same gown of sackcloth, no doubt, that you wore. They said he'd lied at your trial. That he'd perjured himself. That he was practically guilty of murder. No one would speak a word to him or to me. They all turned their backs."

Her voice, thin with anguish, was making the hairs stand up on my arms and legs.

"He'd never been a drinking man, Maggie. You know that. But he started on the whiskey then. He stopped working on the farm. He drank every night on his own. He'd get violent and hit the children. And me."

She stopped. I didn't know what to say. I just waited for her to finish.

"He had the drink badly on him one night, and he hit Robbie so hard that he knocked him right out. John thought he'd killed him. His own son. He did love his children, you know. He really did." For a moment her voice had lightened, and there was a spark of warmth in her eyes. "I don't think he could bear the thought that he might have murdered his own child. I found him in the morning, hanging from the tree."

"Oh," was all I could say. "Mrs. Macbean, I—"

"His brother came and took over the farm. It was his right, I suppose. He said we could live here, in your old place. He's a mean man, but he lets us have a sack of oatmeal from time to time."

She licked her lips.

"I found the letter, about the money John owed your father. I'd give it to you if I had it, Maggie, honestly I would. But you can see how it is with us."

She stood up, picked up a cloth that lay crumpled in a corner, and began to fold it.

"I'll just put our things together," she said. "Please, Maggie. Just today. Give us today. I don't know who'll take us in now."

I stood in silence, unable to speak. Known things from the past were shattering to pieces, and the fragments were falling about me. New patterns were being made that I could only dimly see.

Mrs. Macbean bent down to collect her pots that surrounded the unswept hearth.

"Stop," I said. "You don't need to do that." I took a deep breath. "Never mind the money. You can't pay it, anyway. And you can stay here. You can have this place. I don't want it anymore. I couldn't live here alone."

She sank down onto Granny's old stool. A pewter plate fell from her hand and rolled across the floor. I wasn't sure, though, if she had heard what I'd said.

"The house is cursed," she said. "She cursed it. Nothing good will happen to anyone who lives here."

The memory of that dreadful morning when they had come to the cottage with soldiers and weapons, their faces alight with cruel glee, was on us both. I seemed to see Granny, kneeling by the hearthstone, her eyes darting with malice, her voice cracking with hatred.

And if anyone takes this place from me and my granddaughter, he will be cursed, she'd said. And his cattle will die and his children.

I sat down on the other stool. My old stool.

"Listen, Mrs. Macbean." I wanted to touch her hand but was afraid she would recoil from me. "You must believe what I'm telling you. My grandmother wasn't a witch. She wasn't. She didn't kill your baby Ebenezer. She saw he was sickly at his birth. She knew he wouldn't live long, by her knowledge of these things. She was angry and lonely and cruel, but she had no dealings with the Devil."

Mrs. Macbean shook her head.

"Maybe so, Maggie, but I told you, this place is cursed. I know it is. Can't you feel it yourself?"

Was it cursed? Maybe it was: cursed by hatred, anger and misery. I felt something soften and loosen inside me, as if old bonds were breaking. I heard myself say, "Then I'll lift the curse, Jeanie Macbean. I'll bring a blessing here instead."

I knelt on the hearthstone, where I'd cried myself to sleep so many nights as a cold, lonely little girl, and words came to me from some old corner of my memory.

"God bless this house

From beam to wall

From end to end

From floor to roof.

Floor to roof."





I paused. It wasn't quite enough.

"I lift the curse from this dwelling place. Go, vile toad. Flee, cold snail."

I knew it had happened. A kind of warmth, a kind of peace, had stolen into that tumbledown cottage, like the first rays of a summer's sun. Jeanie Macbean had dropped her head down onto her arms, resting on the table, and her shoulders were shaking with sobs.

"Don't cry, Jeanie. Don't," I said. "I'm telling you, there's no curse now. You have no more to fear from my granny or from me. And the cottage is yours to keep."

And I stepped out from that old doorway and ran down the path I'd followed a thousand times before, till I was standing on the beach at the water's edge. Under the clear sky, the sea lay flat and calm. There were no black and silver clouds to break open, as there had been on that day so long ago, when the whale had come up there to die. There was only a haze, soft and blue, that seemed to lift the distant Isle of Arran, making it hover above the water as if it was floating gently down from the sky. A white shell, perfectly grooved, lay on a rock near my feet. I picked it up.

What shall I do? I thought. Where shall I go?

Would it be the schoolroom in Kingarth? Would I seek work elsewhere? Would I go roving again, to places I'd yet to see? Would Ritchie Blair come for me one day? And if he did, would I welcome him?

"Where's the answer?" I called out. "Who's going to tell me?"

I lifted my arm and hurled the shell away from me, across the water. Ripples spread out from the place where it had sunk, then merged with a wave that broke in foam around my feet, as if the sea had flung my questions back to me.

I had known the answers all the time. I had no need to shout them out. They were there in my head and my heart.

I'll go where I choose, and I'll be who I am, and I'll rise up to meet whatever comes my way.





Afterword

Scotland was a rough and violent place in the seventeenth century. In the north, the Highland clans were at each other's throats. In the southern Lowlands, fiery Protestants had swept away the old Catholic religion and created their own Presbyterian Church.

These Presbyterians were filled with enthusiasm and a sense of their own rightness. They didn't want anyone else to appoint their ministers and interpret the Bible for them. They wanted to pray and run their Church in their own way.

Four hundred miles away, down in London, King Charles II and his government felt threatened. They saw the Presbyterians' spirit of independence as a rebellion. The King decided to choose bishops to rule the Church in Scotland so that he could control the turbulent Scots through them.

The Presbyterians were infuriated. The King had no right, they said, to interfere with their religion. The most determined of them banded together and signed documents called Covenants, in which they promised to remain true to their Church and resist the King. These men and women were called Covenanters.

The government in London decided to crush these rebellious people. As the years passed, and the Covenanters continued to reject the King's bishops, Charles's soldiers hunted them down with increasing cruelty. The Covenanters resisted, slipping out into the hills to worship in the open air in their own way. Those who were caught were imprisoned, fined, and sometimes even executed. This tragic period in Scottish history is known as the Killing Times.

Several of my own ancestors were Covenanters, and three of them feature as characters in this novel. Their names were John Laird, Stephen Barbour, and Hugh Blair. Of them all, most is known about Hugh Blair, who lived on a farm called Ladymuir near Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire. Most of what I've written about Hugh Blair happened to the real Hugh Blair.

When I visited the Riis family, who now live at Ladymuir farm, they showed me round their land and took me to see a hollow by the stream. It was here that the famous Covenanter preacher, James Renwick, came to speak one day in 1684 to a crowd of brave people who risked everything to hear him, even as the dragoons scoured the hills all around, their muskets primed to shoot.

The religion of both Catholics and Protestants in those days was harsh rather than consoling. Being in the right and doing one's duty were seen as more important than showing love and mercy to others. Religious men and women believed that the Devil was a real presence, stalking the world, seeking to tempt people away from the truth, and that those who sinned in thought or deed would be sure to go to Hell and burn in everlasting fire.

At the same time that the King was pursuing the Presbyterian rebels with merciless violence, there was a fever of witch hunting in Scotland. Scared by the violent forces at work in society, people turned on each other. Those most commonly accused of being witches were elderly women. Many were arrested, tried for the crime of witchcraft, and strangled, after which their bodies were burned at the stake.

In my family there was a woman called Margaret Laird who was accused of being a witch in 1698. The records of the parish of Kilmacolm describe the fits and fainting spells she suffered. In those excitable times, that was probably enough to make people suspicious of her. Though the accusations came to nothing, it was the thought of her, and what she had suffered, that helped me to create my own Maggie in this book.